Orthodox Presbyterian

January is a good time to renew good habits and put away bad ones. Many people make “resolutions” to strive to do better in various areas of life.

2 Peter 1:5-8 states, “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

So how are we to supplement or “add to” our faith: virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection and love? The best way to do this is to be in God’s Word. We are blessed to have God’s Word in printed and electronic form in ways that our fathers and mothers in the faith only dreamed about. We literally have God’s Word at our fingertips most of the time. Let us take advantage of that blessing and make sure that we are in the Word daily, both individually and corporately in our homes.

At the beginning of the year I think it is a great time to challenge ourselves to read through the entire 66 books that make up our Bibles. In only minutes a day you can get through the entire Bible in a year by reading about 3-4 chapters a day. Yes, that might mean you have to cut out some other entertainment or hobbies or other activities to make it happen. But the more we read and understand God’s Word, the more we grow in our faith and in these other attributes that Peter speaks of in this passage. We are to work on our sanctification, and reading God’s Word can benefit that process greatly in our lives.

Here are my two favorite Bible reading plans that I suggest each year:

The first (and my favorite) is Robert Murray McCheyne’s Bible Reading Calendar. This will take you through the Old Testament once in a year and Psalms and the New Testament twice.

The second is the Bible reading plan from Ligonier. This is the one that Tabletalk Magazine uses each year. It is also available for phones with the Ligonier app. We use this one as a family and I use McCheyne’s on my own.

Here is a link to several other plans that Ligonier gave out at the beginning of 2017.

It doesn’t really matter what plan you use. Simply read God’s Word and strive to work your way through it. All of God’s Word is important to our lives. Let us not neglect the Word as we strive to supplement our faith.